“This is not about a girl” by Jeremy Barnes

“Through my art and with these works I intend to make my audience take with them a new view of the world around. As an artist, I believe that art should not only be pleasing to the eye, but also cognitive and thoughtful. These paintings are of the world I live in, here in the Rust Belt. The beautiful patterns and textures I see at the factories, on the cars, in the shipyards, this is it. There’s something haunting about them. The evident wear and decay over time, it’s as if they all tell a story, some lost secret. It’s physical proof of the futile battle man wages against time. It rusted. Paint over it. The wall cracked. Plaster it. We humans like to whitewash things. I like to see the wear, however. I like to see the rust. It reminds me of our limited time here and how everything burns or crumbles. There’s no time to waste.” – Jeremy Barnes